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Al-Qaida’s Propaganda Sites, Smacked Down

Al-Qaida’s once-robust online propaganda network has taken a hit. The release of a 9/11 anniversary video was delayed by nearly a week. And one of the most popular video-distribution sites is offline.

For years, the al-Ekhlaas network of sites has been a primary distributor of videos from al-Sahab, Qaida’s propaganda arm. Then, on September 11, al-Ekhlaas.net was suddenly re-registered. Its domain name now belongs to the joker.com hosting service. All of its content vanished. Related and mirrored pages also went down. Even al-Ekhlaas’ YouTube account was suspended.

The strikes against the propaganda network appear to be ongoing. A much-hyped al-Sahab video, commemorating the 9/11 attacks, was only released today
— six days late. And some online al-Qaida sympathizers are complaining that they’ve been unable to use their normal passwords, to download the video.

The Hindustani Timescredits two bloggers with the disruption: Aaron Weisburd from Internet Haganah and "Rusty Shackleford" from The Jawa Report. Shackleford was quick to laugh off the accusation. "News of my ability to thwart al Qaida’s online activities have been greatly exaggerated," he writes. Internet jihadists, on the other hand, are blaming American intelligence agencies for the takedown.